Book vs. Movie: Whiteout
By Russ Bickerstaff
September 14, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
And in this corner: the Movie. A 112-year-old kid born in France to a guy named Lumiere and raised primarily in Hollywood by his uncle Charlie "the Tramp" Chaplin. This young upstart has quickly made a huge impact on society, rapidly becoming the most financially lucrative form of storytelling in the modern world.
Both square off in the ring again as Box Office Prophets presents another round of Book vs. Movie.
Whiteout
In the late 1990s, novelist/comic book author Greg Rucka wrote a story for a small, young independent comic book publisher out of Portland called Oni Press. The story, which ran for several issues, met with critical acclaim, was nominated for a string of Eisner Awards, and was later collected into a graphic novel. The story follows U.S. Marshall Carrie Stetko investigating a string of murders in the icy desert of Antarctica. Filmmaker Dominic Sena (Swordfish, Gone in 60 Seconds) had been familiar with the graphic novel for years when his agent mentioned to him that Joel Silver had the rights to a film adaptation. Sena leapt at the opportunity to work on the film and it was quickly ushered into production. How does the widely-released 2009 film compare with a serialized story that originally met with a substantially smaller audience in comic shops across the country in 1998?
The Book
The story begins at the scene of the crime — an unidentified body of a man is found in the Antarctic next to a few holes that had been drilled into the ground. With his face disfigured, there's no way to tell who it actually was, so the investigation must start with determining the identity of the victim.
The sheriff investigating the death is one Carrie Stetko — a short woman with a mysterious past. There are rumors that she's been posted in Antarctica because she killed someone. There are rumors that she's gay. There are rumors that she's in danger of losing her job. And along comes a very peculiar murder with very few leads. From here we get introduced to the culture of the Antarctic — a place with no permanent residents populated largely by solitary people — mostly men. Carrie is alone, trying to piece together who it was that was killed and why in one of the most desolate and dangerously cold landscapes on Earth.
Aside from the particulars of life in the Antarctic — the fact that no one is allowed to carry guns — the international flavor of the culture and the climate which can kill someone from exposure in very short order — Whiteout plays very much like something of an uninspired police procedural. The whodunit and who it's been done to mystery is cleverly drawn and very, very realistic, but it lacks any poetry or larger scope. Take away the setting and it becomes something of a loose skeleton of an episode of Law & Order without the order.
Much of Whiteout's charm comes from Carrie herself. She's an interesting personality. Carrie is a very inspiring and resilient person drawn into a less than inspired plot. The drama of precisely who she is, precisely what her past is and precisely what her motivations are is a very, very engaging part of the story. The problem is the format. The comic book format excels at delivering a visually dynamic story to be sure, but the artwork of Steve Lieber doesn't exactly leap off the page to deliver it. Even the action sequences lie pretty flat on the page. Occasionally we get a very interesting dramatic moment with Carrie that has been brilliantly rendered by Lieber, but for the most part, the delivery lacks enough dynamic vision to bring a largely uninspired murder mystery to life. That being said, the artwork is never actually bad...it's just uninspired. Everything is rendered with a careful eye for the drama in Rucka's script, but in order to elevate the story beyond the basic architecture of a standard murder/mystery, there really needs to be some sort of overarching brilliance. It's all too easy to blame this on comic books in general for being the wrong type of medium for this type of story. This is kind of a cop-out. Drama can be brilliantly delivered in comic book format in a way that is distinct and unique to the medium. The work of people like Dave Sim (Cerebus) and Frank Miller (Sin City and his work on Daredevil) show the potential here. So why is it that the dramatic potential of the medium fails in Whiteout?
With two different people responsible for bringing the story across, it's difficult to tell who to blame with respect to Whiteout's shortcomings. The script may have dictated to Lieber how the story should be drawn — thus limiting the artist's creative freedom, bringing about a flat and lifelessly rendered story. Perhaps Rucka's vision for the visuals of the story weren't sufficiently expressed in the script. Whatever the case, the graphic novel feels like a relatively good idea (a murder/mystery in Antarctica) delivered without sufficient appreciation for the magic of storytelling.
The Movie
The film opens with a scene on a Russian plane over the Antarctic during the Cold War. A jovial atmosphere quickly turns stale. There's gunfire. The pilot gets hit with a stray bullet. The plane crashes. The film then moves to a far more recognizable plot point. Carrie Stetko is arriving at a science outpost in the Antarctic. Right away the film establishes a very dynamic visual feel. There's a really beautiful tracking shot where we watch as Carrie walks into the outpost, through a hall of people doing a variety of things to try to keep themselves sane in the middle of nowhere. There's a tropical-themed party getting set-up and a heady amount of activity going on in a very, very small space. Carrie walks in to her room, takes off her parka and proceeds to shower. It's a very beatufiul opening scene and there's nothing quite like it in the graphic novel. The unique culture of the Antarctic outposts is lost in the comic book. While what appears on the screen may not be totally authentic, it at least establishes itself as being something more than a murder in a small town and that's absolutely crucial to establishing the unique atmosphere of the story.
Kate Beckinsale (The Aviator, the Underworld series) plays Carrie Stetko. Her overall appearance, though quite a bit taller than she appears on the page, is not completely out of line with how she looks in the comic book. The big difference here is in the personality. Stetko in the comic book is tough as nails with a crassness to her demeanor that keeps up a tough exterior in the harsh nearly all-male environment of the science stations in the Arctic. Here she's still extremely tough, but her vulnerable side is quite a bit more visible. The good news is that Beckinsale still manages to maintain a tough professionalism in her portrayal of Stetko that actually feels a lot more authentic to actual policewomen. The reason why this works so well is that the culture of the Antarctic is seen in the movie as being much more co-ed. Regardless of whether or not this is authentic, it certainly feels a lot more authentic than things appear in the comic book because the world outside the murders is much more firmly established onscreen than it is on the page. Supporting characters have been shifted around, but the important thing is that the charming doctor who Carrie is friends with takes on a rather significant role and he's played with remarkable charm by Tom Skerritt.
While it maintains many of the same plot points and overall pacing of the comic book, the film adds a few interesting twists the make for a far more compelling story. The film's story (written by no fewer than four credited people) twists the original premise of murder involving gold deposits found in the Antarctic into a murder involving diamonds on a crashed Russian plane from the Cold War. Everything else is more or less intact, with all kinds of clever bits thrown in. The most appealing scene added to the film has to be the exploration of the crashed Russian plane from the beginning of the film. The plane has been preserved in an icy cavern. As Stetko and two others explore the plane, they find themselves trapped there in an avalanche, entombed with the dead crew trying to find a way out. It's a pretty compelling scene and it's nowhere in the comic book.
Also, there's a little scene that establishes some cultural background and it's never fully explained for people who might not be familiar. At one point, a woman in a lab is pulling out a core sample of ice. She says to a student, "let's see how long it'll be before they're surfing in Kansas." She's referring to the atmospheric record in ancient, untouched ice. Later on, people on the base are drinking liquor chilled with some of those ancient ice specimens. It's probably not all that realistic, but it is cute. The film is filled with all kinds of little touches like that that establish a solid world outside the murders.
The plot does lag a bit in places. Somewhere around the second physical combat along a lifeline between buildings at the end of the film, it becomes apparent that the flow of events isn't nearly precise as it had been in the comic book. The rest of the film is put together so competently that it hardly seems to matter.
The Verdict
At its heart, Whiteout is a murder/mystery with a gimmicky setting. It's Mickey Spillane meets Jack London. It may not be terribly deep, but it's got a nice pop feel to it that would theoretically work in almost any format. The problem with the comic book is that the author never bothers to pump in enough of the unique feel of the setting to make it feel like anything other than a murder in a small town. The artwork does little to improve the situation, as it lacks the kind of impact that could turn an uninspired story into something better. The film is a far better handling of the premise. Though far from flawless (particularly with respect to some of the pacing) the film has a profoundly better visual appeal. It may not have been filmed in the Antarctic and the culture of the science outposts down there may not be terribly authentic, but the background feel of the film goes a long way toward delivering on the potential of a murder/mystery in the harshest possible environment on the surface of the earth.